Peeping Tom

Since Peeping Tom came out, it has been unfairly positioned against another movie that came out that year: Psycho. Both movies feature a handsome young man killing women, there's a hint of sexual deviance to the killings, so, practically the same movie, right? Except no, not even close. Psycho is a slow-burn thriller that revels in misdirection. Many people alive today saw the movie knowing the movie's twist and the killer's identity, but if you go back and watch it and think about how the movie would look to someone with no blank slate, it's not so apparent. Norman Bates is a little weird, but he isn't obviously a murderer. His mother being dead and him impersonating her is a left field revelation. And the misdirection with Lila Crane is brilliant. Peeping Tom does none of that. You know who the killer is off the bat, because the movie WANTS you to. This movie isn't about tension derived from the mystery; it's about getting to know him and waiting for him to crack again. Peeping Tom's Mark is nothing like Norman; the latter is portrayed as cool and cheerful, while the former is nervous, twitchy, and about to snap at the slightest provocation. The main women are entirely different; Lila is intelligent but devious, while is young, sweet, hopeful, and naïve. Even the way the sexual components of the movies are portrayed is different; Psycho's sexuality is kept at arms reach at all times; Peeping Tom's main character works part-time as a pornographic photographer. Peeping Tom is lurid and sleazy; Psycho is cold and aloof. They couldn't be more different. The comparison makes no sense, and judging it in the shadow of Psycho is unfair. If a couple similarities were all it took for movies to be considered "the same", Fatal Attraction would be no better than Friday The 13th. So, the movie must be judged on its own merits, and of the time it was released. After all, it was 1960 when this came out. The slasher, as we know it, was still over a decade away (Black Christmas, Texas Chainsaw Massacre), so certain fundamentals weren't in place. The movie doesn't have a high body count (three, counting the killer), and there's no gore to speak of; we don't even see a dead body or a trace of blood until the very end. These aren't detractions by any means. It's of the time, and it makes the end all the more visceral. No, what sinks this movie is the Clark Kent Problem. What's that, you ask? Well, put simply, it's the preposterous notion that nobody recognizes Superman/Clark Kent as the same person because of a very small pair of glasses, and one lock of hair swept back. The difference between the two is so minimal, and yet, nobody has even a whiff of a clue. Peeping Tom suffers from a version of this. While Mark doesn't have an alter ego per se, he does lead a double life -- as a professional at a movie studio, and as a lunatic, killing young women with a gimmicked tripod, using a camera and mirror to capture and reflect the fear of their final moments. The problem is that Mark ALWAYS acts like the latter. He is nervous, sweaty, twitchy, on edge, about EVERYTHING. He has zero chill to him. The movie tries to blow it off as him being socially awkward, but it's more than that, unless you're a total clod. Helen, his love interest, is a total clod, picking up on precisely ZERO of the red flags that are being waved about as if King Kong was doing semaphore. The film strip he shows her is all about fear, and other than being confused, she's not put off. When they go on a date, he stops and stares at a couple making out in the shadows of a building for a good twenty seconds, until they retreat into their building; on the way back from the date, he stops and stares at a woman in lingerie in her bedroom. THIS DOES NOT ALARM HELEN AT ALL. Even when she discovers he's a murderer, she's horrified, but also immediately goes into denial and wants Mark to make sense of it all. Co-workers, friends, nobody seems to be bothered by this guy's energy, until the movie needs them to be. The only person to get a read on him that he's more than what he seems is Helen's blind mother, which, of COURSE there's a Magic Blind Person Who Can See What Sighted People Can't. Gotta have one of those! This whole Mark issue just ruins the movie. You sit there wondering why nobody doesn't see this guy as weird and off-putting. It robs the movie of tension, because logically, the way the movie has set itself up, there shouldn't be tension. Everybody should be treating this guy, at the very least, as the weirdo who won't leave his camera at home. Nope! Nobody's alarm goes off until it's convenient to the plot. It's maddening, and drags down what is otherwise a fascinating idea for a movie.